It's So Bad At Home 1,000 Stayed In Iraq

December 26, 1990|The Morning Call

After the resignation of Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze, more and more people are scratching their heads and wondering how bad things really are in the Soviet Union. Everyone, that is, except 1,000 Soviet specialists working in Iraq, according to Eastern European diplomats.

The Associated Press quotes one of the diplomats in Baghdad as saying, "The news they receive from Moscow about the economic situation is so discouraging that they prefer to stay here rather than go home." Even as war clouds the skies above Bahgdad and economic sanctions make supplies scarcer, the lines are longer and the winter bleaker in Moscow. Still, about 2,500 other Soviet workers in Iraq decided to trade the prospect of bombs for Moscow's bleakness.

But that choice in itself speaks volumes of the problems facing Mikhail Gorbachev. Things are grim in Mother Russia.